The House panel examining last year’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol might need to hold more hearings than initially expected due to public meetings this month that have resulted in new information being obtained by investigators, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said.
Hoyer said he spoke Wednesday morning with the select committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who indicated the panel has received a wave of new tips since it launched a series of public hearings in June. While Hoyer emphasized there’s been no final decision on staging additional hearings, the influx of new information might make that move necessary.
“There may well be a need for further hearings based upon information that they are now receiving. We will see,” Hoyer told reporters in the Capitol. “I’m not saying there are going to be. But there may well be a decision by the committee to have further hearings on the information that has been elicited because of the hearings.”
Created by a vote of the House in June of last year, the bipartisan committee spent almost a year investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol before launching the public hearing phase earlier this month. The investigation has centered on the role played by former President Trump as he sought to use the powers of his office to overturn his election defeat — a months-long campaign that led a mob of Trump supporters to storm the Capitol in a failed attempt to prevent Congress from formalizing President Biden’s victory.
Investigators say they’ve already interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and examined roughly 140,000 documents as part of the process. But they’ve also acknowledged that their narrative remains incomplete, largely because a number of Trump’s closest allies — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarty (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — have refused to cooperate, even under congressional subpoena.
The committee has already staged four public hearings, with another one scheduled for Thursday. In each of the last two, Thompson has solicited help from viewers who might have additional insights into the Jan. 6 riot. According to members of the panel, the entreaties are bearing fruit.
“The original hearings would have wrapped up in June, but we are picking up new evidence on a daily basis with enormous velocity,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who sits on the committee, said after Tuesday’s hearing. “And so we’re constantly incorporating and including the new information that’s coming out. So certainly the hearings will conclude before the end of the summer, but I don’t know that we’re going to make it by the end of June.”
Thompson on Wednesday told reporters that Thursday’s hearing — which will examine Trump’s campaign to pressure the Justice Department to help him flip the election results — will be the last of the month, since the House is scheduled to leave Washington on Friday for the two-week Fourth of July recess.
Hoyer said the evidence presented by the committee has already revealed crimes that, in his eyes, amount to treason and insurrection. He suggested the influx of new information about the events of Jan. 6 might leave the committee no choice but to schedule more hearings, since a major objective of the select committee is to provide the public a window into exactly what happened that day.
“The American people are the ultimate protectors of our democracy,” Hoyer said. “As they get more information, there may well be need for additional hearings so that the public will have the most information it possibly can.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.